Interview With Riley - Edinburgh, 4th March 2004

I had the opportunity to interview Riley on the tour with Vaux in 2004, which was awesome. I’ve only taken a few quotes from it which I’ve decided to post up.. so here it is.

Riley on . . .

The Current Tour

It's been cool. It's been really really long because we started off in Hawaii and Japan, which was awesome. It seems like so long ago right now - even though it's only been six weeks. We've been with the Vaux guys for four weeks, which has been really cool. Usually the thought of sharing a bus with another band and just being super crowded is kinda intimidating, but they've been really awesome to tour with and we get along really well. So... it's been good, and every show's been really cool.
This tour has actually been really small. Every show has been, say around 250 to 500 capacity, and then some nights it'll be full and some nights it won't be. The UK shows have all been pretty big which was kinda crazy, but it's been cool because it's been a while since we've played small venues; we did Warped Tour - where there was always a ton of people, and that tour with Thursday was huge, as was the Deftones tour... so it's nice especially because the only times we've been over here in the past was for festivals.

Bringing back Phoenix Ignition

It's actually been pretty fun to play because it's been so long since we've played it. We had been getting so much crap about not playing old stuff and we wanted to find something from Identity Crisis... I mean, we could still play Identity Crisis... It's been weird because we've been touring so much, and because we're touring on the new record right now, that the tour we recently did with Thursday in the States was the first time that we had a legitimate chance to play a lot of the new stuff, and to be in practice with it. Like, on Warped Tour we were trying to mix some of Identity Crisis, Some of The Illusion of Safety, and some of Artist in The Ambulance - and we only had a half hour set, in which it was just too hard to cram everything into. So for this tour we definitely wanted to bring an old song back and we decided it would be Phoenix. I'm glad that people are liking it... It's been cool.

Fans

It seems like the people that I have met that are fans of ours – they don’t want to talk about shallow stuff. They want to talk about stuff that matters like literature and music and just, personal experience and such. It’s not like “oh my god .. what are you doing after the show??” But we’ve been on tour with bands where that’s what happens – like that Face to Face tour that we did with Midtown. I’m really glad that our fans are kinda ... a different league. It was pretty weird in Japan because we were playing big festival shows, but they’re really respectful. There were these people sitting around in the lobby of the hotel we were staying in. Like, we’d see somebody in the morning and not know that they were waiting around to get our signature, we’d go out and do press all day.. come back 6 hours later and they’d still be sitting there really really quiet, and they’d wait until we were done talking to somebody and then come up and just be really polite and gracious. And then at the shows, at the end of a song they’d clap for about 10 seconds and then stop and it was just dead… silence. I heard that it’s them being respectful because they just want to hear the band. They don’t want to talk while you’re talking or anything.. And then, in the UK and Europe it seems like people are so enthusiastic. It’s really really cool to come out here – especially ‘cos it’s so hard to come out here; it costs a lot of money.. and the culture shock is just weird, and time changes and stuff – it’s a lot rougher than touring the States. So it’s nice that we come over here and feel so comfortable because the people are so enthusiastic and cool to us.

Upcoming Tour/ DC

I can’t wait for this next tour with Poison the Well and Darkest Hour. Vaux are actually playing the first 10 dates, and then Darkest Hour will be doing the rest. After that we’re going to be home for about a month and I think we’re going to start working on some new stuff. Then in May and June we’re doing the tour with Dashboard Confessional and The Get Up Kids which I read on the message board that people are unhappy about, but I don’t really care what they think. It's cool in the 'hardcore circle' or in the 'punk circle' or whatever, to hate Dashboard Confessional, and I can honestly say that I don't have any of his records and that I'm not a huge fan, but he's an awesome guy. He's come out to a ton of our shows and has always been super supportive of us. It's cool for 'hardcore' kids to think that Dashboard sucks.. and I can guarantee you that there are probably 45 0r 50% of the people that are like "Aw this tour suckkks" - they have a dashboard record. I've been to Dashboard shows, and his shows are awesome. He's there playing acoustic with thousands of kids singing along; and it's so loud that you almost can't hear one thing. It's definitely going to be cool to be a part of that. We're going to be doing 3 or 4 songs acoustic, I think, so it's giving us an opportunity to try something new. Doing that apple store show that we did - it was really fun.. and it's cool to take songs that are really heavy and aggressive and try to tone them down and give them a different presentation.
So.. it's cool, and we see it as a challenge. It would be boring if we played with the same bands all the time. Granted there are people that are not gonna like the bands we play with, but we do things because we're always down with a new challenge and we want to try something different. This is something that we knew would probably piss a lot of people off. . but I don't want to do what people expect us to do. . I don't want to be predictable.
And.. I think that the Get Up Kids are awesome.. so It'll be cool to play with them.

The Next Record

We’re all really excited about writing because we learned a lot the last time we were in the studio, and one of the things that Brian McTernan taught us on the last record is that we have to be writing individually all the time so that when it comes time to make a record we have tons of parts and loads of ideas, as opposed to touring.. and then once we’re done touring, going into the rehearsal stage and being like “oh crap we have to make a record. We better like, start coming up with some part”’. You can’t force yourself to be creative. So since we got out of the studio we’ve all just been working really hard on our own on new material and then when we get a break, which will be after this PTW tour, we’re going to start sharing ideas.. we’ve already started sharing ideas, and we all have these computer programs with which we can record music while we’re on the road. I think that it’s going to be a really ambitious record; we’re going to make the best record that we possibly can make – and whether it has songs that are ‘not tough enough’ for the ‘hardcore kids’ or that are ‘too tough’ for the ‘emo kids’ or something – we don’t care because we’re going to do this without worrying about whether or not we fit into a certain scene or if people are going to... I actually got an e-mail after we did TAITA and the dude was like “I can’t believe you made such a crap record.. you’re such a sell-out.. you’d better give me some reasons why I shouldn’t go and find a new favourite band” Uhh.. go find a new favourite band! If those people are going to leave us to find something else then that’s fine. I think all of us feel this way; we don’t want to compromise our creativity because we’re worried about not fitting into a certain scene or something. You can be most creative when you’re not worrying about how other people are going to perceive your art. So - that’s what we’re going to do.

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